Robert Casey, an anti-choice Democrat who is challenging Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) in November, has outraged women’s rights supporters by announcing his support for confirming Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.
“It’s very disturbing and should worry, I think, Pennsylvania women and civil rights advocates and people concerned about unchecked executive power to wiretap and eavesdrop on Americans,” Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, told the Patriot News. Casey’s decision to support Alito shows that women “cannot count on a Senator Casey to protect our liberties,” Michelman continued.
On the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito was the lone judge who voted to uphold a spousal notification requirement in Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act, a bill that Casey’s father, then-Governor Robert P. Casey, Sr., had signed into law. The case, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, was decided by the Supreme Court in 1992, which overturned Pennsylvania’s harsh restrictions on abortion.
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